From the chapter on Travel

From Kent Nerburn´s book, ¨Letters to My Son¨

¨To be a real traveler you must be willing to give yourself over to the moment and take yourself out of the center of your universe. You must believe totally in the lives of the people and the places where you find yourself, even if it undermines your faith in the life you left behind.
You need to share with them, participate with them. Sit at their tables, go to their streets. Struggle with their language. Tell them stories of your life and hear the stories of theirs. Watch how they love each other, how they fight each other. See what they value, and what they fear. Feel the spaces they keep in their lives. Become part of the fabric of their every day lives and you will get a sense of what it means to live in their world. Give yourself over to them - embrace them rather than judge them - and you will find that the beauty in their lives and their world will become part of yours.
But travel is not as romantic and exotic as it sounds. The familiar will always call, and your sense of restlessness will not give you rest. Your emotions will fly crazily in all directions until sometimes you will feel that you have lost your moorings. If you travel alone, the warmth of families and couples will break your heart, and your lonliness will plunge you to depths you did not think possible.
And then, there are greater dangers. You may wake and discover that you have become a runner who uses travel as an escape from the problems and complications of trying to build something with your life. You may find that you were gone one hour or one day or one month too long and that you no longer belong anywhere or to anyone. You may find that you have been caught by the lure of the road and that you are a slave to dissatisfaction with any life that forces you to stay in one place.
These things happen. But how much worse is it to be someone whose dreams have been buried beneath the routines of life and who no longer has an interest in looking beyond the horizon?
I believe it is worth taking the risk. How else will you know the feeling of standing on something ancient, or hearing the silent roar of empty spaces? How else will you be able to look into the eyes of a man who has no education, never left his village, and does not speak your language, and know that the two of you have something in common? How else will you know, in your heart, that the whole world is precious and that every person and place has something unique to offer?¨